Paper documents have maintained their appeal to many people despite the increased availability of electronic forms of data storage. Today, many paper documents bearing data of all different types can be printed and prepared in hardcopy form with an electronic inkjet or laser printer. Paper documents are especially useful when a user desires to annotate the printed material on the document with handwritten notes and sketches.
Many current technologies exist for the manipulation of printed documents. One of these technologies is the ability to scan a hardcopy document and then reproduce a copy of the document or a digital file representative of the markings on the hardcopy document. The scanner can capture any markings on a hardcopy document including both printed and handwritten elements, without adversely affecting the original document.
Another present technology that is used with printed documents is optical character recognition (OCR). Optical character recognition involves the recognition of machine-editable text in images of printed documents (usually captured by a scanner). Computer algorithms are typically used on a scanned image of a printed document to discern printed text. In many cases, printed non-text characters such as lines, columns, and printed images may also be discerned from the scanned image. OCR technology is currently used mostly to provide a user of a word processing program with editable text extracted from the printed document. However, OCR technology may be exploited for many different applications.
Throughout the drawings, identical reference numbers designate similar, but not necessarily identical, elements.